Elizabeth Campbell
About me...
I am a Compositionist with
primary interests in literacy,
pedagogy, community studies, ethnography,
and expressive culture.
I am studying for
a PhD in
Composition and TESOL at
Indiana University of
Pennsylvania. Most of my
cohort are experienced
English teacher/ scholars and
half are from outside of the
States. I study with people from
China,
Thailand,
Indonesia,
Jordan,
Kazakhstan,
Russia,
Oman,
Taiwan,
Japan,
Niger—talk about a global
perspective!
My
MA in Folklore is from the
University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill. At
Carolina,
I focused on
community studies, anthropology,
ethnography, and expressive
culture. My thesis, "Everlasting
Rocks: Conversations On the Rock
Buildings of Valdese, North
Carolina," was a dialogic
ethnography of ethnicity and folk housing.
In it, my Waldensian
consultants and I explored the social, cultural,
and physical construction of
their (truly fantastic) rock
buildings.
After the MA, I worked as a
consultant, freelance writer,
and non-profit administrator,
again focusing on the
relationships between people and
communities. I've worked on
museum exhibits, interpretive
sign projects, and local history
projects. I've also worked on a
wide range of
documentary projects
for folklife
organizations like
Traditional Arts Indiana
(TAI).
I have been teaching, in one
capacity or another, for quite
some time. In 2004, I was part
of the collaborative town/gown
team that researched and wrote
The Other Side of Middletown,
an award winning
book.
The
Middletown
project, funded by the
Virginia B. Ball Center for
Creative Inquiry, involved over 75
faculty, staff, students, and
members of
Muncie,
Indiana's
African American community. In that
project, the many
professional threads of my life—community
outreach, research, and teaching—came
together,
inspiring me to pursue the PhD.
I hope to spend the rest of my
career doing this kind of
collaborative, community and
student centered work.
I live in
West Virginia, with my husband,
Luke Eric Lassiter and our
cats, Mike and Betty.
Eric and
I share similar interests in
community studies and
ethnography. Mike's
interests don't move much past
himself; Betty is
interested, primarily, in more
dinner.
